Syracuse's South Side will be home to an urban farm tended by teens

David Lassman / The Post-Standard
File photo. This was in August 2008. The Urban Delights youth farm stand was selling produce at the downtown Farmer's Market. From left to right are Bryant Brown, Rhasheim Rutledge and Jade Freeman.

A dozen vacant South Side lots are about to go a little bit country.

A partnership is using the site to create an urban farm. One of its purposes is to make better use of vacant land.

“Which there is plenty of on the Southwest Side,” said LaRhonda Ealey, associate director of Jubilee Homes.

Jubilee Homes, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Onondaga County and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are partners in the project.

The site is at Bellevue and Midland avenues. The plan is to create raised beds in which teens will grow vegetables to sell in city neighborhoods where fresh produce is hard to come by and possibly to local stores. There will be space for community gardens, too.

The farm will provide young people with a paying job, work experience and knowledge about sustainable agriculture and healthy food, Ealey said. The teens will be employed by Jubilee Homes’ well established Urban Delights youth farm stand project, she said.

The urban farm has been in the pipeline for several years. Jubilee Homes is about to close on the purchase of the lots from the city, Ealey said Thursday.

Jessi Lyons, resource educator with the Extension Service, said Emanuel Carter from ESF’s landscape architecture program will help design the site.

On Saturday, volunteers, including young people, will spread wood chips over the soil where the raised beds will go. ESF donated chips from its willow biomass project. The chips are part of a system to make sure none of the soil, which is contaminated, gets in or on the plants or farmers, Lyons said. The main concern is a low level of lead contamination, she said. The soil in the beds will not come from the site.

There will be a layer of special fabric between the wood chips and the soil, so the soil and plants in the raised beds will have no contact with the contaminated soil, Lyons said. There will be on going soil testing, too. The team working on the project consulted with experts at ESF, Cornell and state and local health departments to address the soil contamination, she said.

A $50,000 Environmental Justice Grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation is being used for administrative and personnel costs, and some of the other money for the project comes from the Midland-Lincoln-Bellevue Community Initiatives Working Group, Ealey said. Other entities have contributed, too.

The long term plan is for the farm to be self sustaining economically, Ealey said.

Want to help?

What: Spreading wood chips on the future site of the Southwest Community Farm